


Don't you know there's a war on?

by effing_gravity (Malteaser)



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale Is Trying (Good Omens), Aziraphale is Bad at Feelings (Good Omens), Crowley is Bad at Feelings (Good Omens), Crowley turns into a snake when things are too much, Hurt Crowley (Good Omens), I for one envy him this ability, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Offscreen Atrocities, Pre-Relationship, Snake Crowley (Good Omens), historical setting: WWII
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:54:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27361576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Malteaser/pseuds/effing_gravity
Summary: Sometimes, when things are a bit too much for a human shaped being of the world to handle, Crowley turns into a snake instead. Aziraphale doesn't understand, but he tries to be understanding.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 91





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is inspired by [this](https://good-omens-kink.dreamwidth.org/3161.html?thread=1768793#cmt1768793) prompt from the kink meme. I took the prompt in a different direction than the prompter was probably looking for, as this story is less about Crowley being hurt, and more about Aziraphale being unable to help him.
> 
> It's also inspired by the election, which has turned my brain into [this](https://youtu.be/yBLdQ1a4-JI). I'll be posting a snippet a night until I either run out of fic or we run out of election.

Three days after their joint quarterly performance reviews Aziraphale did not hear a knock on the door. Nevertheless, he got up, rushed over to the door, and threw it open. For a moment, he thought that he had perhaps indulged in a little too much wishful thinking, and then there was an impatient hiss from the doorstep.

Aziraphale looked down and saw Crowley, coiled in upon himself. He was a snake of medium-smallish size: the sort that would cause people to entreat their friends to come look at this massive snake they’d found in their garden, but not so large as to raise suspicions of having escaped the zoo. His tongue flickered sullenly. He was probably terribly cold, coiled up there on the stoop in the dark. 

“Oh dear,” Aziraphale said. “Well, you’d better come inside.”

Crowley hissed, and slithered inside. He didn’t say a word, but rather settled himself next to the fire that was suddenly roaring merrily in the grate.

“Oh dear,” Aziraphale said again as he closed the door.

* * *

Crowley didn’t like turning into a snake. It was something he’d mentioned off-hand a few times, often accompanied by an emphatic _Ugh_ and just after he’d transformed from a snake. Aziraphale hadn’t taken it very seriously until sometime in the third century A.D., when Crowley had told him why. 

They’d been very drunk. Mani had just become a prophet of surprising popularity, and as he was claiming to be following in the footsteps of Jesus and Buddha and Zoroaster, it was a mess: those were three equally powerful and distinct religions that he’d invoked, and they were being _converged_ by the force of human belief. There was some summit of angels and ahuras and devas being held to hash the matter of souls out. Aziraphale had not been invited to attend, though Heaven had been asking for him to write increasingly detailed reports on the matter for months and must surely be using the information he’d provided them. Crowley’s side had seemed to be biding their time, waiting to see what Heaven’s play would be before they made their own move. Crowley feared what that move would be: Heaven had always been absolute in their monotheism, intolerant of any other deity. This summit, should it result in something like multitheism, or even henotheism, might increase their scope, upset the delicate balance between Heaven and Hell, tip things in the favor of the angels. Hell wouldn’t abide that. They couldn’t.

“I did get stuck, after the Fall,” Crowley had told him. “I don’t know for how long. I wasn’t able to change my shape at all until after I’d gotten the Garden job.”

Aziraphale paid keener attention to when he changed into a snake after that: winding his way through the broken pillars of Ubar after the city had been destroyed, terrorizing the Welsh countryside while leaving conveniently little damage to the townspeople and their crops, diving into the floodwaters that had become Kaifeng to look for survivors… he’d taken the smallest form Aziraphale had ever seen when cholera had broken out from the Broad Street pump. He’d been just barely able to coil around his wrist three times, which had made it quite easy to hide him with the cuff of Aziraphale’s shirt. He’d taken him along on his rounds: at the time, the guidelines for Heaven were firmly against curing plagues, but he could alleviate the symptoms, and make it more likely that the victims would survive.

There was one common thread between all of those instances: in each case, Crowley simply wasn’t able to cope with being human shaped, whether physically, emotionally, or a combination of the two.

* * *

“The others will be glad you’re back,” Aziraphale offered after a moment. 

Crowley hissed angrily and hid his head beneath one of his coils. 

“Obviously, I won’t tell them you’re back until you’re fit for company,” Aziraphale said, rolling his eyes. 

Crowley hissed doubtfully, still hidden in on himself.

“They might suspect that we’re not human, but I think showing up as a snake might be a bit much, even for Verity,” Aziraphale continued.

Crowley poked his head up as he hissed this time. He was obviously laughing at him. Even in snake form, the laughter was obviously strained.

 _Are you hurt?_ That’s what he wanted to ask, though the question was pointless. Of course Crowley was hurting. He wouldn’t have come to Aziraphale’s doorstep in such a state otherwise. _How are you hurting?_ That was a slightly better question, though it was still futile to ask. At best, Crowley would get all silent and withdrawn, and at worst he would leave.

“Well, I’m going to have an early breakfast, I think,” Aziraphale said. “What do you say to some kippers? Rosamund stopped by yesterday with a few she got while visiting her daughter in Leigh-On-Sea. I’m not sure they were strictly legally obtained- they’re rather on the smaller side of the minimum length required and wouldn’t have had to be recorded with the day’s catch, you know how these things go- but I do believe they’d go well with a poached egg, and Belinda did lay a rather large one yesterday.”

He was nattering on, he knew that, but he needed something to fill the silence. While Crowley was perfectly capable of speech in his serpent form, he didn’t often use that capability. Not when it was like this. 

Sure enough, when Crowley replied it was with another hiss and a bobbing of his head. 

“Splendid,” Aziraphale said, and hoped the cheer in his voice sounded less false to Crowley’s ears than it did to his own. “I’ll get the stove started, then.”

* * *

Hell didn’t send rude notes. It was a fact Aziraphale had known full well since before their fight over the matter of providing Crowley with the means for self-annihilation had taken place. 

Eighteen quarterly performance reviews ago, Crowley had turned up at his doorstep, man-shaped, blood-soaked, and with a protractor lodged in his neck. That had been the year 1494- the first review year after Crowley had begun to accumulate commendations for the Spanish Inquisition, and the various other Inquisitions it would go on to spawn. They’d had every reason to be pleased with him, and still he had barely managed to leave after having a potentially discorporating wound inflicted upon him. 

Aziraphale had healed him, and then he’d asked about the circumstances of the injury, and then they’d had a row that had, somehow, taken Aziraphale completely by surprise. They hadn’t spoken for some years, until they were into the sixteenth century A.D. and had both been assigned to Bukhara. They hadn’t spoken of their argument, when they met back up. They hadn’t apologized for hasty words or overstepped boundaries. They’d just fallen back into their usual pattern, and had left the forgiveness implied.

Heaven’s quarterly reviews were never anything so dramatic. The Archangels could be condescending, certainly, and they often seemed to willfully misinterpret his reports. They would call him to account for miracles in a way that was always slightly different from what he’d prepared for, and he’d fumble his way through the explanations, and be told to try to do better, be better, be the angel of the Lord he was supposed to be. He would agree, and they would let him go.

This most recent performance review hadn’t been much different, save for the offer extended to all agents with a current assignment on Earth to stay in Heaven until the war was over, and the announcement that if they were discorporated then they would not be permitted to request a new corporation until after the war had ended. Aziraphale had taken the latter under advisement, and had politely declined the former. Ever since opening the shop in 1800, he’d had the suspicion that any reassignment to Heaven would be permanent. 

He hadn’t been alone in his declination, but he had been in the minority, which was always an uneasy place to be in Heaven. He’d been able to console himself with the fact that his posting was far from the most dangerous one. While certainly not the safest- what was even in the Jornada del Muerto basin these days? And it was quiet in Mecca, at least- it wasn’t half as bad as some. There was always someone in Rome, ever since the Vatican had set up shop there. And someone in Jerusalem, and the Palestinian Mandate wasn’t having an easy time of it either. Arkhangelsk wasn’t anywhere near the Eastern Front, thankfully, but it was still in Soviet hands which was unlikely to be a fun place for an angel to be. There was always someone in Ethiopia, as it was where the Garden had originally been placed, and was where the Ark of the Covenant currently resided. Ethiopia had also been occupied by Italy until just recently. He’d been behind Ithuriel on the queue to return back to Earth, and had caught sight of her posting: she was in Harbin. Harbin was the capital of the puppet-state of Manchukuo. It had effectively been under Japanese occupation since 1932.

London wasn’t occupied, and hadn’t been, as close as that threat had felt only a few short years ago. While bombings had resumed after the landings at Normandy, the so-called vengeance bombs weren’t nearly as constant or numerous as the bombs of the Blitz, and they were tapering off now that they were beating the German forces out of firing range. It wasn’t a bad place to be at all. It was home- as much as he could call any place aside from Heaven his home, that was.

And Heaven wasn’t a bad place to get performance reviews from. They meant well. They meant the best, for Earth and Aziraphale, and they didn’t mean to hurt him at all. 

Hell, on the other hand, very obviously meant to hurt Crowley a great deal. Very often, they seemed to succeed.


	2. Chapter 2

Aziraphale did better than most with the rationing. Part of that was thanks to Belinda, a hen he had purchased after her distraught six-year-old owner had careened into him, certain that her beloved hen would be destined for the soup pot if she didn’t spirit her away immediately. Aziraphale had offered five pounds for her, and his solemn word that he would return her after the war had ended. He’d had to surrender his egg ration in order to get the card for chicken feed, but it had been worth it. The egg ration was only for one per week: thanks to a bit of miraculous encouragement, Belinda laid at least one egg a day, every day, for the nearly five years they had been together.

Creativity with regards to miracles helped with the rest as well. As he’d explained to Michael so long ago, when she’d come to him for help in planning a feast with which to break Jesus’ fast after his forty day sojourn in the desert, miracling food into existence often resulted in something that held the right appearance, but tasted of nothing and felt like lukewarm mush on the tongue. What he had not told her- in part because he hadn’t quite worked the trick of it out at the time- was that it was very simple to get around it if you had a bit of the food in question with you, preferably in your mouth. Aziraphale’s neighbors figured out quickly that if they shared their treats with him, they would often leave with more food than they’d originally brought with them. As he was genuinely providing people with much-needed sustenance, he’d found those miracles easy to explain when pressed. 

And then, of course, there were the gifts. Rosamund was hardly the only one to bring him food under the table in thanks. It was well within his purview as Principality to hand out blessings to soldiers, after all, and with Hitler’s rise to power being blamed on Crowley, even Sandalphon hadn’t raised any objection to the practice. Starting from when the war had broken out, he’d distributed several medallions- Saint Christophers, crosses, flaming chalices, eight-pointed red and black stars, some Magen Davids, a few star and crescents, and a handful that were simply pennies with a hole in them, though Heaven never need know that he made secular blessed medallions- to his regular customers, and anyone else who knew to ask. They were blessed, to ward against danger. It was no guarantee of safety or survival, but if the wearer was in a situation with any opportunity for survival, it would present itself. 

Presuming they kept the medallion on, of course. One of his regulars- one of his ‘nephews’ he could say, given that the boy had taken the time to write a rather cheeky letter addressed to his Auntie Azalea before being shipped out- had given his medallion to a lover. He hadn’t made it out of Dunkirk, though the lover had made it to London and now served under the Czech government in exile. And also presuming that the wearer wished to take said opportunity for survival. More than one of his regulars had volunteered to stay behind and cover the retreat for their fellows, and more than one hadn’t survived the experience- though the men they were protecting generally at least lived long enough to tell the tale. 

Rosamund had five children, two girls and three boys. The eldest was the aforementioned daughter from Leigh-On-Sea, who had taken over her husband’s ramshackle skiff and the risky business of wartime fishing along with it. The rest were currently engaged in military service. All, from the fisherwoman down to the Spitfire pilot that was the baby of the family, wore medallions he had blessed, and so far all of them were still living. Rosamund didn’t understand the particulars, and was deeply suspicious of how her middle child had come to know Ezra Fell in the first place, but none of that mattered in the face of having all her children still alive. 

So, Rosamund brought him fish, on occasion. And Nellie brought him some extra butter and milk from the cows her grandchildren kept. And Gladys would bring him preserves made of elderberries and roasted cobnuts every time she visited her cottage in Sussex. And Edgar would always give him the first pick of the rabbits that were being raised by his grandniece just outside of town. 

And all of that paled in the face of what he could acquire from the less salubrious connections he’d forged at the start of the war. 

“Oh, Angus was by just recently. He had a hunk of beef that had, er, fallen off the back of a lorry. It was in good condition, despite the tumble.”

Crowley hissed, and flicked his tail in a manner that probably would have been a very rude hand gesture had he actually possessed hands at the moment.

“Really, dear boy, I don’t know what you have against Angus,” Aziraphale tutted. “He’s never been anything less than perfectly civil to me.”

Crowley hissed again. This time the sound was accompanied by an eyeroll that would have given an herpetologist paroxysms to witness. 

“I’m not saying that he’s a good man, or even a nice one,” Aziraphale told him. “Merely that he’s always been civil to me, and that he’s provided us with a lovely pair of steaks we could have for supper this evening, if you’re so inclined.”

Crowley hissed with an uncertain edge to it. Aziraphale took that to mean that he wasn’t sure that he was inclined, but didn’t want to deprive the angel of the pleasures of ill-gotten steak. 

“Well, let’s see how breakfast sits with you, and then when I return home from work, you’ll let me know how you fancy dinner,” Aziraphale allowed. 

Crowley made a sinuous movement that might have been a shrug of agreement, and then settled himself next to Aziraphale’s usual chair. Once Aziraphale had finished cooking and settled down to eat, Crowley had eaten half the poached egg and then promptly slithered off the table and back into the store, leaving Aziraphale to finish breakfast in what was probably meant to be peace.

* * *

This was a better time for Crowley to be a snake than most- insofar as this could be a better time for anything. Wartime was, after all, a dreadfully inconvenient time to do much of anything: reading, learning, working, eating, showering, sleeping…

It was also dreadfully inconvenient for an Archangel to visit, which is what made this a better time for Crowley to be a snake than usual. They’d had a few close calls over the years, especially since Aziraphale had opened the bookshop and put down roots. They’d had one on opening day, even- though, thankfully, Crowley had been woman-shaped at the time, in possession of a full complement of limbs, and had been more than willing to use them to beat a hasty retreat once she realized who Aziraphale was talking with. Their closest call had been during the cholera outbreak. Talking to Gabriel with Crowley wound around his wrist had been beyond nerve wracking, and was not an experience he was keen on repeating. 

The ban on travel from Heaven to Earth during wars such as this one had come about early on in the previous war. Aziraphale couldn’t help but suspect that it had as much to do with Gabriel nearly losing a shoe when he came to put an end to the Christmas truce Aziraphale had been maintaining at his portion trenches as it did with Michael being unexpectedly discorporated by a zeppelin bombing. The particulars didn’t really matter, he supposed. The effect was the same either way. 

Of course, part and parcel of that caution was the orders Aziraphale had been given concerning his conduct for the duration of the war. They weren’t anything as clear-cut as _don’t get involved_ , thankfully: he was meant to maintain his cover, which meant pitching in and making do and all the other axioms. But he wasn’t supposed to be directly involved with the fighting. He wasn’t meant to be placing himself in danger- or even under the command of any particular government if he could help it. 

While Aziraphale still had no desire to fight- hadn’t had any desire to fight since before the creation of War, really- he had wanted to help. He’d felt he needed to help. London, and Soho in particular, had a large population of immigrants, many of them Jewish. And then there were his clubs, which had seen a similar uptick in veterans of Berlin’s cabaret scene. The stories they’d told, the things they’d seen… he’d heard too much about Hitler and his Nazis to be content with sitting things out as an air raid warden, for all that he knew that job was necessary one.

He’d also heard that the British government was looking to recruit from the ranks of those who, to put it delicately, were generally on the outs with the law. Saboteurs, conmen, gang members, smugglers… and forgers. 

He qualified for that last one.

He loved the printing press, and thought it one of the best inventions humanity had yet come up with, but just as it could be used to widely and cheaply disseminate helpful information, so too could it be used to spread harm. The interest in demonology, occult magic, and grimoires containing information of how to summon beings from the deepest, bloodiest pits of Hell that had become resurgent during the Renaissance produced a great deal of harm. He had, with Heaven’s approval, taken to buying up such tomes and modifying them into something harmless- and if he’d also taken the opportunity to remove Crowley’s name from the whole business then, well, what he’d never spoken of couldn’t hurt anybody. 

He’d gotten quite skilled in the field of literary forgery as a result. It was a small matter to turn those skills to the forging of identification papers and visas and such. There was no shortage of refugees in need of his skills, and he made no effort to be discreet about the fact that he had them. He rather flaunted it, in fact, hoping to be noticed. If the government came to him with the sort of offer that no sane human would have dared to refuse, Heaven could hardly fault him for taking it. When the very first agent had come knocking on his door, he’d leapt at the chance to be recruited. 

All things considered, he probably should have looked more closely at that first offer, as it had turned out to come from a Nazi spy. But aside from the church, which he still felt rather poorly about, there had been no harm done in the end. The Nazis were dead, Aziraphale had not been discorporated, and he and Crowley had reconnected. Reconciled, even, at least to the point where Crowley felt comfortable seeking him out when things were too much. That was something to be grateful for.

* * *

“I’m leaving now,” Aziraphale said, once the morning had arrived. “You have the run of the shop, obviously, but do try not to torment Belinda, please? I don’t think she’ll be able to tell that you’re you, as opposed to a snake that might try to eat her.”

Crowley hissed and drew himself back in mock offense, as though to ask _Who, me? Causing trouble?_

“She’s the only source of fresh eggs we have, since you insist upon getting those powdered monstrosities each week, and she won’t lay if she’s upset,” Aziraphale admonished. He paused. The urge to bend down and press a kiss to the top of Crowley’s head was nearly overwhelming. Thankfully, it was also fleeting, and in a moment he’d shaken it off. “I’ll be back at the usual time, I expect. Do try to think about those steaks.”

The walk to work was uneventful, and from the look of things when he entered the office the day was shaping up to be uneventful as well. 

“Is the other one back yet?” Verity asked as he removed his hat and jacket. 

“Not quite,” Aziraphale replied. “Though Crowley should be back soon. Give him time.”

Verity grunted and returned to her work- or possibly, the day’s crossword in the _Times_. Or she might simply be plotting where to bury their bodies in the event she needed to arrange their untimely demise. It could be difficult to tell with Verity. 

Their division of the Department of Ungentlemanly Warfare was not the most illustrious division. The pay was a pittance- not that Aziraphale much cared about that- and their office was beyond crowded, which was rather more of a problem. They each had to share a desk, there was barely room to move, and even less room to store their papers. They’d had to institute a smoking ban to forestall the risk of a fire, and eating and drinking were permanently banished to the hall. 

Still, there were some perks. For one thing, being the redheaded stepchild of a governmental organ polite company didn’t like to speak of meant that there was little risk that he would have to fend off further offers of employment once the war had ended. For another, their oddly specific mandate meant that his coworkers were similarly offbeat, and an eclectic bunch too, rather than the sort that had made “Captain Rose Montgomery” seem convincing. 

She had never been even overtly rude, “Rose” or Greta or whatever her name had actually been, not to anyone in his presence. Still, it had been hard to miss the way her eyes had tightened whenever one of the Lewkowicz children had coming running up looking to have a sweet pulled from behind their ear, or her sudden coolness whenever Rani, Ismail, Dorothea or any of his regulars who were not white had come in, or even her discomfort around Aziraphale himself, whenever the matter of where he drank and chose his company was referred to. He’d told himself that he really should not have expected better. He’d needed an agent of the British government, not someone with a kind heart and an open mind. He’d told himself that perhaps he might be a good influence on her, or else that once he’d gotten himself established he would be able to find himself another handler who was a bit more tolerable and tolerant. 

He’d been right about that last bit, sort of, after a fashion. One need not look any further than his own deskmate to see the evidence of it. 

Fernie Mae Rosenthal possessed a startling number of attributes Greta would have hated with a cold, murderous passion. She was an American émigré, the mixed-race daughter of two very ardent communists, taller than many men at six foot even, and fond of wearing men’s suits- which did indeed make her look very sharp. To judge from the discourse he really wished she and Alice would find some place to engage in that wasn’t where he would try to enjoy a cup of tea, she rather enjoyed being addressed as a man in bed as well. She was their expert in the Hebrew language, the liturgical and mystical texts written with such, and the more esoteric applications of that knowledge. When he introduced them, Crowley had called her the group’s ba’alat shem. It was the sort of title that would burn a demon’s tongue no matter how sarcastically he said it, and Aziraphale understood that to be the highest of praise for her abilities Crowley could offer. In Aziraphale’s estimation, she had more than earned the praise. 

“Mr. Fell,” she greeted him as he sat down. 

Crowley had miracled all the furniture to be impervious to normal wear and tear and the threat of breaking therein some point before bringing Aziraphale in from the Nazi-infested cold. At probably the same time, he’d also miracled the furniture to be as creaky and screechy and loud as possible. Aziraphale waited for the cacophony of wood to settle down before replying. “Miss Rosenthal. And what do we have on the agenda today?”

“Giants,” she replied. “Specifically, nephilim.”

“I must confess, the Enochs are not my favorite bit of reading,” Aziraphale told her. It was true. It always felt a bit like spying on his boss, and for all that he knew that the humans didn’t really have the story of the Watchers correct, it still gave him a funny feeling. And it made him remember the two dozen odd children Crowley had squirrelled away on the Ark, and the fact that he’d never questioned how Crowley had been able to persuade so many away from their parents in such a short period of time. “I’m more of an Ecclesiastes man.”

Fernie Mae snorted. “You would be.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm managing my anxiety by blasting [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9w1TrEDANw) song whenever I catch myself spiraling, and I must say, it's very good at derailing every thought I might have ever had.
> 
> This has nothing to do with the fic. I just thought I'd mention it in case it helped anyone else.

It was not, as Aziraphale had already thought more than once during this period, as though being snake-shaped rendered Crowley incapable of speech. It was, rather, that no one expected Crowley to speak when he was in his serpent form. None of the humans knew he was capable of talking, and Aziraphale had long since realized that it was futile to try to get him to talk when he was like this. 

Not that they didn’t converse. Of course they did. Simply because Crowley wasn’t speaking didn’t mean that he wasn’t communicating, and Aziraphale had gotten rather go at interpreting the body language and hissing that comprised such communication.

He hadn’t had a choice. After the incident with the infernal protractor, Crowley never came to him again with another injury, not while he was human shaped. 1494 had been a long time ago, and he’d had an unfortunate amount of practice since then.

He’d learned how not to say things as well. All those damnable questions that always burned so brightly in the forefront of his mind whenever Crowley showed up in such a state, for one. 

_ Are you hurt? How are you hurting? Did they torture you? Were you attacked? What was their reason? Was it the Arrangement? Was it anything I did? What can I do to make this right? _

Of course, he tried to console himself, it could just as easily be that Hell had been pleased with Crowley’s work, and he was just exhausted from having to pretend that he found genocide to be a rollicking good time. It wasn’t a very consoling thought.  _ I know that you’re a good person, deep down _ was as bound to make Crowley run off as questions about his well being. 

There wasn’t much he could do, really. He could provide a relatively safe space for Crowley to slither around in, he could fill the silence with idle chatter, and… that was it. He just had to keep on keeping on, and wait for Crowley to feel well enough to be a human again.

* * *

Aziraphale returned home on that first day to find Belinda roosting on top of Crowley in his armchair. He could not help but get the impression that the tableau had been staged.

“Well would you look at that? I do believe she thinks you’re one of her chicks,” Aziraphale told him. Crowley turned his head to glare at him. “You’ve been adopted, dear boy, there can be no mistaking it,” he continued. 

Crowley let out a loud hiss of offense, waking Belinda who clucked disapprovingly and flapped off to her usual bed in the old milkcrate by the kitchen hearth. 

On the second day, Aziraphale had been held up with the appraisal of several books confiscated from the home of a recently arrested Nazi spy, which had rather derailed his other work. Many of them were repugnant, but only a few were dangerous, thankfully. He came home feeling very tired, and had begun to fry himself a steak before he remembered that Crowley was there. Crowley was still indifferent to the concept of dinner, but he gave no sign of offense at Aziraphale eating without him, and as the meat would start to go bad without the use of miracles soon he saw no harm in digging in.

The third day was mostly spent sorting the books he’d appraised. The few he’d identified as too dangerous for mortal eyes had already been sent to storage (Aziraphale would retrieve them later, once the war was over), but the rest needed cataloguing. Some of them- most of them, really- were complete drivel, which might be of historical interest at some point when this all became history but were utterly useless now. Some of them had some potential, as reference manuals for their own work, or for him to gussy up and use as bait at auction houses in Zurich or other neutral locations. It took longer than it should have. Ozzy had brought up the matter of Bonfire Night- not that they could have bonfires, of course, with the need to keep the lights out at night, but still- and how much he missed the celebrations. Fergus, who was very staunchly Catholic, had a few controversial opinions about Guy Fawkes. Val had declared Bonfire Night to be inferior to Halloween, which had proved to be even more controversial, especially with Fernie Mae taking the position that they didn’t really know how to celebrate Halloween over here. Gladys had kept trying to interject with facts about Samhain, to no avail, as everyone was all talking over one another at that point. Eventually, Alice ended up getting everyone to settle back down with a hair-raising story about a geung-si terrorizing the docks, and there went the last dregs of Aziraphale’s ability to concentrate.

It wasn’t that the story was engrossing- though, it was, Alice had a gift for storytelling. And it wasn’t that the Cantonese phrases she peppered into it were distracting- her pronunciation was actually quite good, considering that she was four generations distant from Canton. It  _ was _ that she was as Liverpudlian as they came, and there was something about Scouse that made his brain stand at attention, certain that a new language was about to be born. 

Consequently, he arrived home quite late. Crowley was draped over his favorite armchair, more than half asleep. He raised his head and let out a small, tired-sounding hiss when Aziraphale entered. Aziraphale smiled at him, made himself some tea, selected one of his harder-wearing copies of  _ The Importance of Being Earnest _ , and settled in for the night. Little by little, Crowley shifted so that he was less draped over the back of the chair and more over Aziraphale’s shoulders. 

_ Would you like me to read aloud? _

He wanted, very desperately, to ask, but Crowley seemed to be asleep, his head tucked snuggly in the crook of his elbow. He didn’t want to jeopardize any of that, so he remained silent instead.

* * *

They were, very technically, an office devoted to offensive counterespionage. They dealt in matters of the occult, which as far as anyone outside the office was concerned probably should be more properly termed “occult”. Hitler had some interest in that area, mainly as part and parcel of solidifying his mythology of the “master race”. Their job was to turn this to an Allied advantage, chiefly by using artifacts to lure out Nazi spies, or to waste Nazi money on doctored books and artifacts. As far as Verity's nebulous bosses were concerned, that was all they did. 

The problem with that was, of course, that the occult very much did exist (snake in point: Crowley) along with a wide range of other powers that, arguably, _ no  _ human should have command of, much less  _ genocidal _ humans. Some of the books and artifacts they came across were genuinely dangerous, and genuine threats to the war effort too. Everyone had seen strange and otherworldly things by now- some of them had even been pulled in after having been caught up in some kind of supernatural disaster. 

“Downstairs was pretty iffy about the whole thing at first,” Crowley had told him. “But I wasn’t about to be sent to the front- and definitely not with the Nazis, which Hell was pushing for- so I kept playing for time, and then some idiot managed to dig up the Seal of Solomon. Once we'd dealt with _that_ , I ended up strolling down into Beelzebub’s office and plopping the blessed thing down on their desk. They’ve left me alone since then. Between that, and them thinking I’m responsible for Hitler, and my sending down an occasional report saying  _ Look! Churchill’s gone and given a favorable reference to the Devil! _ they leave me alone now.”

That was Crowley’s excuse for being here- and for developing such a reputation for foiling occult-related espionage operations that the Nazis had learned to despise him, despite Hell's nominal affiliation with them. Aziraphale’s excuse was that once recruited, he couldn’t help but get the impression that the Serpent of Eden was somehow involved.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you ever experience an election so bad that you immediately fall asleep? And then wake up on to hear of Putin's (rumored) plans to retire in a tweet about Destiel becoming canon, and then immediately go back to sleep because you clearly do not understand the English language any longer?
> 
> Anyway, that and the length of this chapter are the reasons why this is so late. As I write this, the national election has yet to be certified, but it does look like I'll be spending the next four years thinking about the White House and sighing with mild disappointment instead of feeling a deep and primal dread, so here's to that!

The fourth day after Crowley’s return was a Saturday. There were no weekends during a war- there was barely a sabbath during a war- but as Aziraphale had some books to get fighting fit and there was no room at the office for him to work he stayed home. They used to make someone- usually Crowley- watch over him as he worked, to make sure he didn’t abscond with the books, but he was trusted well enough now. The fact that he used his own supplies instead of making Verity find room in the budget for them didn’t hurt either.

He made a lazy start of it. Crowley was disinterested in eating, so Aziraphale made himself some porridge with rose hips syrup and drank the last of his remaining tea ration for the week. He fed Belinda, cleared out her old milkcrate linings with a snap and then laid down fresh newspaper by hand. He hummed to himself as he got out all the necessary tools of his trade.

“I think I might like to have the gramophone going. Any objections?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley hissed indifferently, but roused himself to slither off in the direction of his record collection. 

“Any requests?” Aziraphale called after him. He slithered up to one of the upper shelves, and then began to tap against the spines until Aziraphale had to hurry to prevent them from being knocked to the ground. “Really, dear boy, there’s no cause for that,” he scolded as he shored them up. 

Crowley merely tapped his tail more firmly against the spines, causing one of the center records to begin to miraculously fall out. Aziraphale caught it before any damage could be done. He sighed when he read the title. “Anton Rubinstein’s  _ The Demon _ ? Really, it’s a bit on the nose, don’t you think?” Before he’d quite realized what he was doing, he reached out and gently touched the tip of his finger to Crowley’s snout. 

Crowley reared back in surprise. Not quite sure how to recover from that, Aziraphale merely took the record over to the gramophone.

_ The Demon _ was a lurid opera based upon an even more lurid poem that had, for several years, been banned for heresy in Russia. Probably it was banned in Russia again now, just on the grounds of having to do with religion, but he didn’t know that for sure. 

The story was a simple one. A Demon was summoned to destroy the beauty of God’s creation, which he seemed quite happy to do, loudly proclaiming his hatred for all things and ignoring the pleas of an Angel to reconcile with Heaven instead. He went to fall in love with a Princess, and promised her that the whole world would kneel before her if she returned his affections. The Princess fled, awaiting the arrival of her human intended instead. Sensing a rival, the Demon ambushed her fiancé’s caravan and killed him. The Princess went into a convent, and the Demon followed, convinced that his love made him redeemable even as the Angel cautioned him that it wasn’t that simple. The Demon managed to seduce the Princess, but before their love could be consummated the Angel reappeared with the ghost of her former fiancé in tow. The guilt trip proved hideously effective, and killed the poor woman more or less instantly. The Angel declared that her suffering had earned the Princess a place in Heaven, and the Demon’s suffering had earned him eternal loneliness, and thus ended the whole sorry affair.

Aziraphale let it play out once, since Crowley had chosen it. Then he switched to  _ Tosca _ , which was a bit more cheery.

* * *

Aziraphale was not well liked in the office when Crowley first brought him in. 

Part of it was the simple mistrust of someone who had worked, however unknowingly, for Nazis, and in all honesty Aziraphale didn’t begrudge them that. Part of it was the suspicion that he was a bit of an idiot, being duped by Nazis. Aziraphale wished he could begrudge them that, but found he couldn’t. Part of it was that he gave off a not particularly subtle aura of being as queer as a nine bob note. He could have done something about that in theory, but he didn’t particularly wish to. 

He didn’t have to, really. It might have been the most persistent reason, lingering long after the other two charges had been dispelled, but it was still the least problematic reason. There was a war on, and his skills were needed. That was more than enough for most of the office, and whatever friction remained, from the Zielinskis’ aloofness to Dai’s persistent needling, was easily overlooked.

It was hardly the only source of tension in the office either. Festus was decidedly uncomfortable with the proof that the deities of his Efik ancestors (or, at the very least, those of their Yoruba neighbors) existed, as represented by Florence and her faith-derived abilities. Ozzy, who had spent his adult life studying the pagan religions of the British Isles from a comfortably Anglican past tense, was equally disquieted to find a vibrant, living tradition as exemplified by Gladys. Surjan and Ruby generally worked well together until the subject of Indian independence came up. It was a cause they both believed passionately in- how they ended up working for British Intelligence Aziraphale was never told, though he presumed blackmail was involved- though while Ruby had pinned her hopes upon Mohandas Gandhi, Surjan wished to follow the example set by Bhagat Singh. There was always an unspoken but volatile tension between Simon, who clung to every artifact from Australia as though it might hold the key to the people he’d been stolen from, and Sam, who was in the process of changing his name from Sameer Khouri to Samuel Curry and would probably spend the rest of his life trying in quiet desperation to pass as a native-born Englishman of Anglo-Saxon descent. Yevheniya had defected quite cheerfully, first from the Soviets and then from an enclave of “White Russian” forces that the Nazis had recruited, while Dimi still hoped to return home as a citizen in good standing, and neither could understand the other. Mat Yusuf was always quietly seething at the way their attention was focused on Hitler and Germany, rather than the Japanese Empire that had invaded his native Malaya; oddly enough, when his ire bubbled over it tended to be focused on Surjan, who had fought in the ill-fated defense of Singapore, or on Isobel, who on paper at least had managed to escape before the Japanese could reach her home. Santino had, if anything, an even larger chip on his shoulder. He’d been sent to Britain to live with an uncle as a young man after his father had been arrested for his opposition to Mussolini’s regime. A few years later he and his uncle had been interned by British government as enemy aliens. They might still be on the Isle of Man, had Santino not taken the deal Verity had laid out for him. He wasn’t happy to be here, obviously, and he had the tendency to take it out on the rest of them by clinging tightly to the communist line about religion, and insisting that there was a perfectly natural reason for everything they saw or were involved in, no need for the involvement of spirits, deities, magic, or miracles of any sort. As time wore on, this became less infuriating and more amusing, especially as Jehona, their other communist, had taken the existence of otherworldly powers in her own offbeat stride. 

“I’m just saying, imagine the possibilities! Commissar Katallan! Premier Xhindi! Shtriga and Dhampir fighting with the partisans!” she had said with enthusiasm. “Who knows? Perhaps Heaven itself might be ripe for revolution!” 

“I do believe that’s commonly known as the Fall, and it didn’t end well,” Aziraphale had pointed out delicately. 

Jehona had shrugged, undeterred. “Perhaps Hell needs a revolution then,” she’d suggested, seemingly oblivious to the way Crowley had been aspirating his coffee not ten feet behind her. “Reorganize all those circles into proper soviets.”

“Plot the dictatorship of the elven proletariat on your own time, Zogolli,” Verity had called out from her desk. “I need to know everything you do about werewolves, and I needed to know it yesterday.”

Verity was their leader, and almost distressingly unflappable. Aziraphale rather got the impression that if he went to her and confessed the entire truth about his existence, she would look at him and say something like “While I appreciate the information, I would appreciate it more if you’d concentrate on doctoring those manuscripts.”

Verity’s steadiness was a large part of why their little outfit worked, despite their many differences. The other part was that for every difference, every point of friction, there was an unexpected point of commonality that brought people closer together. 

Gladys and Arne frequently got to talking, swapping smuggler’s stories, and poetic descriptions of Cornish coves for those of Norwegian fjords. Ruby and Fernie Mae had each grown used to being the only women of color in their synagogues, but had very quickly learned to love having someone else to share the experience with. Fergus, Dai, and Osmond could grumble together like no one’s business. Additionally, Fergus made sure to introduce his priest to Festus (presumably alongside his late brother) and the Zielinskis, and gave them everything they needed to get along in the Catholic Church in England, including a buffer from uncharitable souls who took exception to the presence of foreigners in their church. Alice took Sam, and to a lesser extent Isobel, under her wing, and taught them everything she knew about how to live in the country of her birth. Yevheniya and Guiomar bonded over being defectors; Simon and Mat Yusuf shared a desk and developed an odd friendship as a result. Surjan, Ctibor, Jehona, and Val, soldiers all, could often be found exchanging war stories.

And there was romance along with the friendship. The Zielinskis, Tadeusz and Zofia, had been married for years before the war’s outbreak, but it was clear that the transition from cobbler and cobbler’s wife to resistance fighters to refugees to spies had only deepened their relationship. Alice and Fernie Mae had grown quite devoted to one another, and as he’d gathered that Alice’s family knew that she’d met someone- a female someone- and were treating it with the same grace as any family whose eldest daughter had fallen in love with a handsome American would. Aziraphale was privately hoping that Fernie Mae would simply move up to Liverpool with her after the war was done. Val and Ctibor had been cohabitating for some time now, ostensibly to save on the costs, but Aziraphale knew better: Ctibor had been wearing Val’s medallion for quite some time now, after all. Santino was courting Florence, always careful to back off when she indicated, always helplessly drawn back in when she was receptive. It was slow going- she’d been widowed just two years before beginning her work with the office, and she had a young son to care for, and those were just the chief complications- but he rather thought they might come together one of these days.

And there was Crowley. Crowley, who loved Aziraphale and was loved by him in return. For a few heady months back in 1941, he’d almost forgotten why they couldn’t do anything about it.

* * *

He worked steadily throughout the day, turning an old reprint into something that might pass as a first edition, and an obvious forgery into a rather good one. He worked well into the night, pausing only to ensure that the curtains were drawn closed and blackout regulation fit, and had just finished a very late supper when he experienced a sudden, prescient wave of foreboding. 

He’d barely had time to make sure his work was hidden away before there was a frantic pounding on the door. 

“It’s open! Come in, pronto!” Aziraphale called out. 

In very short order he had well over two dozen people crowded into the front of his shop, some in dresses and paste jewels with lines painted down their legs to mimic stockings, some in military uniforms from forces both domestic and foreign, and some in traditionally masculine civilian dress ranging from well-to-do gentlemen in suits to roughs in patched coveralls and grease-stained shirts. Aziraphale scanned the lot of them for someone experienced to deputize, and caught sight of Val.

“Did anyone get lost in the scarper?” Aziraphale asked him. 

“American fellow,” Val said, after a moment to pull his wig out of his face and search the crowd himself. “Army uniform,  _ young _ . Looks like he could be Festus’ sodding kid brother.”

“You know where the first aid kit is,” Aziraphale said. He grabbed the helmet he’d kept from his air warden days- ARP had gotten one back so he saw no harm in keeping the non-miracled one- and put it on. It didn’t mesh well with his suit, but hopefully the dark of the night and the mid-autumn fog would help to fudge the rest of the details if he ran into any charpering types.

Thankfully, the wayward American was easy to locate. There was another service alley roughly equidistant between Aziraphale’s bookshop and Soho Square, which had always proved a tempting hiding spot for those who didn’t quite know that there was a better spot at A.Z. Fell & Co. He didn’t greatly resemble Festus, aside from complexion, but maybe the younger Effiong had been stockier with more prominent ears. He wasn’t sure: Issachar had died before Aziraphale had started his espionage work, and no one had ever shown him a photograph. He was young, though, and wearing the uniform of the American Army, so Aziraphale was reasonably certain that he was the right man. 

“Hello,” he greeted him. 

The young man nodded, hands deep in his pockets, trying to look nonchalant.

“I’m Auntie Ezra. I believe you were with the group that was attempting to reach my shop?” he continued. 

“Oh,” the American relaxed slightly. “Yeah, um. I’m Pierre.”

“Ooh, a Frenchman,” Aziraphale teased. 

“Darius Pierre. I mean,” Pierre, Darius Pierre shrugged helplessly. “Somebody is French somewhere along the line, I think?”

“Most often in France I do believe,” Aziraphale pointed out. “Come on, then. Let’s not get caught out by the orderly daughters.”

Darius followed, looking confused. “What have the nurses got to do with anything?”

“What?” Aziraphale asked. 

“Orderly daughters? Are they nuns?”

“No, no they’re … charpering omi?” Aziraphale tried. 

Darius, if anything, appeared more confused. 

“Sharpies? Lilies? Rozzers?” Aziraphale tried. “Coppers?”

“Cops,” Darius said, looking very relieved to have found a word he understood. Consequently, he said it much more loudly than he should. 

“That’s the buggers,” Azirapahale said. “Now, let’s go before we’re caught.” 

* * *

By ineffable happenstance, Aziraphale had known two of his coworkers besides Crowley when he began to work there. 

One of them was Isobel Parker, who was on paper the daughter of an Anglo-Scotts missionary and a refugee with the Korean Provisional Government, who had been sent to live with British relations shortly after the government in exile had moved to Guangzhou. Aziraphale should know: he’d forged those papers himself. In reality her name was Park Iseul-bom, and she was a member of the Korean independence movement, who had clawed her way to England with the thought that the Special Operations Executive might give her better training and equipment than the Korean Liberation Army that was based out of China.

The other was Val, who had been a regular at his bookshop for some time, stopping by at night whenever there was a raid at one of the nearby clubs. He hadn’t expected to spend the war on the home front, and thus Aziraphale had given him a blessed St. Christopher’s medallion when the National Service Act went into effect. He hadn’t heard from him since, not prior to being brought in, but he hadn’t heard from a lot of people since they were called up. There was a war on. Not everyone could stay alive, much less in touch.

Naturally, since both of these associations were technically criminal in nature, it did make things a bit awkward at the office at first. Isobel tried her best not to speak with him directly, though she was unfailingly polite whenever they did have to speak. Val took a different approach. 

“Are you some kind of fairy?” he demanded.

Such accusations were not entirely uncommon. But, generally, they were done in private- almost always back at the bookshop- with perhaps one or two trusted friends for company, after more than ten years of association. It was rather unheard of to make such an accusation after seven years of knowing one another, in the midst of a crowded office no less.

The choice of wording was, thankfully, similarly unorthodox.

“Yes, I am. Well spotted,” Aziraphale said drolly.

Val opened his mouth, and then closed it again as he visibly rethought the verbal exchange they’d just had. “Wait,” he said. “I didn’t mean. You know...”

“That way?” Aziraphale suggested. “Like so?”

“That’s not-”

“Earnest?” Fernie Mae added, her laughter barely contained.

“Oh yes, that’s an important one,” Aziraphale agreed. 

“That- I wasn’t-”

“Valentine, have you finished that report on those Egyptian artifacts we got in the last raid?” Verity called from her desk. 

Val hesitated for a moment. “No ma’am,” he replied finally.

“Well, then stop playing silly buggers and go finish it,” she ordered, exasperated. 

Val waited until after they were both finished for the day before coming to him again. 

“You’re not human,” he said, falling into step beside Aziraphale as he made his way home. 

“Again, well spotted,” Aziraphale replied. “And I do mean that sincerely. It normally takes people a few more years to realize that I’m not aging.”

“ _ You don’t age? _ ” Val asked, aghast.

“Yes, that’s generally what gives me away,” Aziraphale said, nonplussed. “Why? How did you figure it out?”

For an answer, Val held up his medallion. 

“Ah,” said Aziraphale. 

“I’ve had a truly stupid amount of luck wearing this thing,” Val said. “The way I figure it, I should have been dead by now a good dozen times over. I don’t mean that my job is dangerous and we live in a dangerous time. I mean that, amongst other things, three people so far have pointed a gun in my face and pulled the trigger, and every single time the gun jammed.”

“Well, that is lucky?” Aziraphale tried weakly. 

“Look. I just- what are you?” Val demanded.

“I can’t tell you that,” Aziraphale replied. 

“Like you don’t know or-”

“ _ Or _ ,” Aziraphale cut him off firmly. “The British Government is hardly the first to come up with something like the Official Secrets Act. I am bending more than enough rules by helping with the war, much less having this conversation with you, and I will thank you not to push any further.”

They walked in silence for a moment.

“I need to know how far this will work,” Val said. “The medallion I mean. What’s the limit there?” 

“If death is not certain- if there’s any chance of survival, it will make itself known to you,” Aziraphale told him. “It’s just as I said when I gave it to you: it might give you a bit of luck when you need it most. People’s aim will be knocked off, or failing that the gun will jam if at all conceivable. That probably wouldn’t work if it’s been cleaned just before- and it won’t do much against bombs. If a bomb were to drop squarely on our heads right now, it probably wouldn’t go off, and while that would be good for the people around us, we’d still end up rather squashed.”

“And if someone were to take the medallion off of me?” Val asked. 

“Then you would no longer have that protection, I’m afraid,” Aziraphale told him.

“Would they?”

“Oh Lord no!” Aziraphale cried. “It’s a  _ blessing _ . It needs to be given in good faith in order to work. You could take it off of your own free will, and give it to someone, and they would then be protected, but no one could take it by force. Are you all right?” 

Val had stopped walking. 

“A blessing,” he repeated faintly.

“I mean, that’s as good a term for it as any,” Aziraphale said. 

Val stared at him. 

“If that’s all, then I think I shall bid you good day,” he said, and beat a hasty retreat back to the bookshop.

* * *

No one had ended up on the wrong end of a billy club, so there was very little in the way of injuries. Someone had lost a shoe and cut his foot; one of his regulars, Ralph, had tripped, ripping his trousers and scraping his palms. Val had finished by the time Aziraphale returned with Darius in tow.

“Right then,” Aziraphale said, closing the door behind him. “Welcome to A.Z. Fell & Co. I’m the owner, Ezra Fell, and you’re safe here. Now, I can see we’ve got quite a few new faces so let me go over the ground rules. First of all-”

“Don’t touch the books,” chorused all of his regulars.

“Exactly!” Aziraphale said, beaming. “Now, straight through there is the sitting room, a past that is the kitchen, and past that is the water closet, should you need to freshen up. There’s a pipe in the kitchen for anyone who needs it. I’ll bring out the sewing kit as well. There’s a shelter in the cellar, so you don’t have to worry about going out on the streets as you are, and you’re all welcome to stay until morning. There are some cots in the cellar, and I’ve been reliably informed that my settee is very comfortable. I’m going to make some tea. Newcomers, please let me know how you take yours- though, be warned, it's the end of the month so I’m down to powdered milk, wild honey, and damson jam.”

“Jam in tea?” Ralph asked. 

Aziraphale shrugged. “That’s how the Russians do it.” It hadn’t been uncommon in Poland either, the last time he’d been, which was why he was offering: one of the men in uniform was clearly from the No. 303 Squadron of the RAF. “Any other questions?” 

“By pipe do you mean to smoke?” asked one of the Americans. 

Aziraphale hid a wince. Given the number of foreigners in attendance, he’d been trying to stick to the very plainest of English dialects as he spoke. “No. If you feel the need, do step into the service alley, I have some delicate items here that really  _ cannot _ be exposed to smoke,” Aziraphale told him.

“It means telephone,” Ralph supplied. 

“For fuck’s sake,” the American said. “This is England, I thought everyone would speak English.”

“Do you really not have Polari over there?” Ralph asked. 

“No!”

“Well how do you keep out them naff omi, then?” he asked. 

Behind him, Darius made a face, clearly not understanding and wondering if he should assume the worst. 

“Naff omi is a heterosexual. In this context, at least,” Aziraphale explained for his benefit. “And we’re all omi palone here. Now, if we’re finished being divided by a common language, who wants some tea?”

Few of the Americans did- though one of them (he gave his name as Vladimir, and so was probably of Russian extraction) did join the Polish pilot (who wished to be called Jan) in requesting damson jam in his tea. One fellow actually started to ask him about coffee before being frantically shushed by his regulars. Then Aziraphale went off to the kitchen. Most of the men trailed him as far as the sitting room, but Val followed him into the kitchen.

“My emergency stash of tea is on the top shelf of the pantry,” Aziraphale said, as he began to fill the large kettle from the hot tap.

Val opened the pantry and let out a long, low whistle. “How do you have this much tea? I didn’t think there was this much tea left in the whole of the British Isles!”

“Honestly? I heard ‘peace in our time’ and thought to myself  _ Ah, well, there’s this generation’s ‘war to end war’ _ and began to buy tea in bulk,” Aziraphale told him. “I try to stick to the ration for my day-to-day consumption, but sometimes the situation calls for more than what two ounces a week can reasonably get you.”

“Can’t argue with that, I guess,” Val said, flopping tiredly into one of the seats at the kitchen table. Aziraphale set the tea to boil and began pulling out mugs and preparing the powdered milk for use. 

“No Ctibor tonight?” Aziraphale asked.

“He’s got a head cold,” Val replied, taking off his earrings one by one and letting them clink together in the palm of his hand before stuffing them down the front of his dress. “He knew I was looking forward to doing Édith Piaf tonight, so he told me to just be wary of any Legionnaires I might meet.” 

Aziraphale rolled his eyes, and pointedly did not comment. The whole thing seemed in very poor taste, considering the Little Sparrow being called up to answer accusations of collaboration, but sometimes being in poor taste was rather the point of things. “Which club were you at?”

“The Salisbury.” Val’s smile faded. “I’m not missing something, right? They really haven’t done this for a while, right?”

“They have not,” Aziraphale confirmed. Between the strictures of the blackout and the more violent crimes that were often committed within it, the raiding of gentlemen’s clubs had rather fallen by the wayside. “I’m not surprised, though. This happened last time too. Britain’s on the offense, now. The Allies have begun overtaking part of Germany. We’re winning. It’s no longer an all hands situation. Soon people will be talking about women leaving the workforce to make room for the men to return, there will start to be color bars again, and these past few years of law enforcement not taking it upon themselves to peep into our bedrooms- literal and metaphorical- will evaporate. Hopefully no one will try to spin out some kind of traitor lesbian conspiracy theory before the armistice this time.” Though Bosie was still around, and he’d been a very vocal proponent of all that ‘cult of the clitoris’ nonsense. He wouldn’t be terribly surprised if he came back for another round, though apparently prison had mellowed him out some.

He’d outlived Oscar, and Robbie, and very nearly everyone else from the Hundred Guineas Club. Every so often Aziraphale thought about paying him a visit, but he knew he was never going to go through with it. For one thing, the sight of Aziraphale unaged after nearly half a century might give him a heart attack, and he didn’t really want to kill anyone. For another, he doubted very much that he would be able to keep a civil tongue in his head.

“Well, that’s depressing,” Val commented. 

Aziraphale sighed. “I could be wrong,” he said. “These things tend to go in cycles. There are already places where it’s legal.” France had been the main one for more than a century, until the occupation. Time would tell whether they’d strike those Nazi-written laws of the Vichy regime from the books, but for now, Paris had been liberated for barely two months. “Perhaps things will look up some day soon.”

“From your lips to God’s ears,” Val muttered. 

_ I certainly try _ , Aziraphale thought, but didn’t say. Partially this was because Val was already uncomfortably close to the full truth of who he was. Mostly it was because everyone in the sitting room began screaming.

Aziraphale crossed the distance between the kitchen and the sitting room in three bounding steps and then stopped, fear rapidly replaced by annoyance. 

“Oh for Heaven’s sake- no, no, put that poker down!” he snapped.

“That’s a snake!” the man said, not putting the poker down.

“And he’s not going to harm you, so put it down,” Aziraphale ordered. “And for pity’s sake, what are you doing Crowley?”

“What?” said Val quietly from behind him. Aziraphale ignored him for the time being.

Crowley, who had draped himself over the mantle, hissed sullenly. He was clearly feeling a bit put out by the company.

“I didn’t forget about you,” Aziraphale protested, though he had forgotten about him, a little bit. “And even if I had that’s no excuse to take it out on them.”

Crowley hissed again, head bobbing in an irritated manner. 

“They aren’t customers, and I know you can tell that,” Aziraphale scolded. “Now get down from there!”

Crowley hissed once more, and then slithered back down to the floor, past Aziraphale and Val into the kitchen, and up the stairs, leaving a slight irritated (Aziraphale) and largely stunned (everyone else) silence in his wake.

“Can you actually train the snakes here in England?” Darius demanded after a moment. 

“ _ What _ ?” came the response from several of his regulars. 

“Just-  _ that _ ,” Darius said, pointing in the direction of the stairs. “And, you know, Sherlock Holmes and the whole speckled band thing?”

Sherlock Holmes had never quite stopped being popular, but the great detective was  _ especially _ popular now, what with the talkies that had brought him into the modern day and had him fighting Nazis alongside the rest of them- ageless, invincible, and unchanging indeed. His author must be absolutely furious, in whichever afterlife he currently resided.

Consequently, Darius’ remarks sparked quite a discussion, which did not quite cover the sound of the tea kettle shrieking. Aziraphale went to take it off the heat, with Val following.

“Crowley?” Val demanded, as Aziraphale began to prepare everyone’s tea. 

Yes, that would be a sticking point with him, wouldn’t it? “More than one person can have the same name, you know,” he said. “For example, I’m sure there are a great many men called Arthur in the world. Several of them probably even enjoy it.”

Val, whose full name was Arthur Valentine, scowled deeply. “Alright Auntie, no need to be such a meese bitch about it.”

“Let’s agree to disagree,” Aziraphale replied with a sniff. 

Val snorted.

“And do me a favor and get a bottle of vera out of that cabinet there? I think a nip of something stronger might be in order,” Aziraphale asked. 

“Is this also from you hoarding from before the war?” he asked. 

“No, I’m pretty sure someone distilled all of that in their bathtub last year,” Aziraphale told him. “Not the highest quality in terms of taste, but it is potent.” Potent enough that it wouldn’t require much encouragement to ensure that the memories of everyone who imbibed were decently and pleasantly muddled. 

* * *

War truly was an inconvenient time to be doing much of anything, and that included being in love. That did not change the fact that a great many people loved quite fiercely during every war he had ever borne witness to. There were always romances, and friendships, and comradery turned into family. There were always moments of gentle tenderness even against the most abhorrent brutality. It had always seemed like such a wonderful thing, that love, like little lights against the dark. 

Of course, he’d never before experienced it from the inside, as it were. He’d never been in a war while also being in love. It did not feel like a wonderful thing.

Or, well. It did sometimes. For those first few months in particular, as the Blitz died out and they spent much of their time together, as Verity had given Crowley strict orders to keep him under watch.

“She thinks this is her punishing me for bringing you into the fold instead of arresting you,” Crowley had crowed about three days in. “Shows what she knows!”

They’d been relaxing on the settee in the bookshop, hats doffed, jackets off, and sleeves rolled up, enjoying a snifter of brandy or three while they waited for the ink to dry on the certificates of authenticity Aziraphale had been fabricating. Crowley had removed his sunglasses; Aziraphale had loosened his bowtie. They’d gone out to dinner earlier. The food had been good, he was sure, but he couldn’t recall what they’d eaten, only how handsome Crowley had looked, smirking gently at him over the top of his wine glass.

And it had felt wonderful at the time, it truly had. The brightest of lights, even as the world was plunged into some of the darkest of times. But…

But. 

He wanted to grab the humans sometimes and give them a little shake until they could make him understand how they managed to do it. The urge overcame him at the oddest times. When Alice and Fernie Mae stumbled into the cupboard where he was trying to drink his tea, clearly intent on one of their assignations, he wanted to ask  _ How did you manage to fall in love during all of this, and why did you decide to pursue one another _ ? When he found himself working with the Zielinskis over the matter of decrypting intercepted messages and encrypting false ones to send in their place and there was a lull in the work, one that allowed them to lean up against one another and entangle their fingers he wanted to know  _ How is it that you’re managing to keep one another when everything is so terrible?  _

_ Don’t you feel guilty? _ He wanted to demand it as he watched Florence blush and duck her head to let Satino tuck a daisy behind her ear. And when Ctibor first came in wearing the medallion he’d given Val he’d had to leave the room so he didn’t attempt to say _ Don’t you worry that you’re putting him in danger?  _

* * *

Things settled down eventually. Val claimed the settee, and everyone else divided themselves amicably between the rug before the hearth and the cots in the cellar shelter. Aziraphale puttered around for a bit, making sure everyone was settled in, clearing away mugs, planting a little suggestion here and there (“Snakes are marvelous for keeping the mice away, you know.”), and making sure that his work was well under lock and key. No doubt someone would get peckish in the night, and to protect the rest of his food Aziraphale left out some jam and bread. Equally doubtlessly, the ground floor water closet would see some trade tonight, but so long as they cleaned up after themselves he didn’t particularly mind. Everything seen to, he nodded to himself, and picked up his copy of  _ Irene _ and went up to bed. 

It wasn’t the actual playbook that he had with him, of course- that had grown too delicate to handle casually without the use of miracles many decades ago- but he’d made himself his own copy for times such as these.  _ Irene _ was often considered the absolute worst of Dr. Johnson’s works, the very epitome of technical proficiency with no sense of art, a picture-perfect execution of form without any soul to animate it. Aziraphale could see their point, and sometimes he wasn’t sure himself why he kept returning to this particular play, when there were so many others that could stir any number of emotions in him. It wasn’t even that good a story- it was terribly uncharitable towards Muslims, and really, if one wanted to write a rousing tale of Mehmed the Conqueror’s love of a Christian, one need not look any further than his history with Radu the Beautiful. 

Other times, like tonight, he knew all too well what the draw was. He needed that numbness, the cold clarity divorced from all else. Forget all history, forget all feeling- Dr. Johnson had a very precise idea of what was right and what was wrong, and it was writ large in blank verse from page one, sapping every passion and ambiguity from the temptation of the title character and ruin that yielding to it brought. It was exactly the sort of play that Heaven would approve of, if Heaven might be persuaded to approve of plays.

And, as he strongly suspected would be the case, when he opened the door to his room he found the Serpent of Eden on his bed. 

“Really, dear boy, that was entirely unnecessary,” he scolded. 

Crowley hissed, half-contrite and half-dismissive. 

“I’m glad you see my point,” Aziraphale replied, ignoring the second half.

Crowley had already lit a fire in the upstairs hearth, turned the bedside lamp on low, and seemed to have the warming pan in bed as well. The whole space was really quite cozy. Aziraphale went over to his old bergère that had been retired from the sitting room when he’d gotten his wingback chair some decades back and began to decamp the books piled there.

Crowley hissed again, confused.

“No, no, you keep the bed,” Aziraphale told him, not looking away from his work. “You need your sleep, I daresay. I’m just going to read.”

He settled himself down, ignoring Crowley’s questioning hiss. He tried not to see it as Crowley raised his head up, trying to catch his eye. Crowley hissed again.

“Really,” Aziraphale said, trying to sound certain even though he didn’t even know what he wanted to convey with the word. 

There was a moment of silence, and then a small thunk as Crowley slithered onto the floor with an angry hiss.

It must be said that Crowley was actually quite good at his job, when he could be moved to put some effort into it. Whereas Aziraphale could try his very hardest and barely glance the mark, Crowley’s individual temptations were works of art. Literally, in some cases: the humans had made statues of them, and paintings, and more. _If this fruit could make me speak, then what might it do for you? Wouldn’t it be worth it, giving up the kingdom of Heaven to see all the kingdoms of the world under your just rulership?_

Which was how Aziraphale knew that his current conundrum was not the result of the demon’s temptation, but rather the weaknesses he’d cultivated himself. There was little about their relationship that would be worthy of art. The very idea was laughable. What would that even look like- a relief etching by William Blake, depicting the Principality Aziraphale, newly liberated from prison, bringing the Demon Crowley to an illicit Parisian crêperie? Who would want to see that?

And it was also how he knew that this particular moment was no temptation. Crowley would not hiss and flail about if he wanted a favor from Aziraphale. He only acted like this when he was hurt and in need of help and didn’t want to admit it. 

Aziraphale sighed. “Oh, very well,” he said, bending down to scoop Crowley up in his arms. Crowley shifted a bit as Aziraphale settled down on the bed- which was indeed very warm- but didn’t move away, resting in a tangle of coils that rested along the crook of his elbow and dangled down onto his lap instead. 

He didn’t sleep either, which seemed counterproductive to Aziraphale, but he was hardly going to call him out on it. For his part, Aziraphale found himself abandoning  _ Irene _ in favor of  _ A Picture of Dorian Gray _ before too long. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter carries a couple of mentions of the Holocaust, and other genocides, and also of someone committing suicide. World War II really fucking sucked, in case there was any doubt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With many thanks to T'ruah, which sent me an email last week which included the phrase 'we danced a socially distanced horah'. This has absolutely nothing to do with the chapter, but it was the most joy-sparking turn of phrase I'd seen in a long while and it got me through an otherwise hectic week.

Aziraphale hadn’t lived through every war, of course. It would hardly be possible, what with the tendency for several wars to be happening at the same time in very distant parts of the world: omnipresence wasn’t within a Principality’s remit, after all. But he’d lived through a great many wars, and a great many massacres and such other evils that he was of the opinion should have been classified as acts of war, at the very least, and that has given him a very wide frame of reference on the subject. If he refrained from calling this war the worst of them, it was because giving a superlative title to something like this caused a certain subset of people to forever take it to mean that they could get away with any behavior short of it. He had no desire to spend the next several centuries or however long it was Earth had left before Armageddon listening to every war-mongering tyrant stand over the fields they’d bloodied and say “What are you so upset about? It’s not as bad as the Second World War.”

War was always awful, it was always- no, he couldn’t in good conscience say that either. He knew how things had begun, and he knew how they were due to end, and it was with the wars he had been created to fight in. They were necessary and just and allegedly they would be quite beautiful when viewed from the correct perspective. He simply didn’t have that yet.

What he could say without reservation was that this war was uniquely and intensely horrifying. Every opportunity he had to make it less so, or even just keep it from getting worse, was one he seized onto with gratitude. 

That wasn’t to say that mistakes weren’t made. He was always making mistakes, miscalculations in the balance between the need to help and the need to keep his true nature a secret, between who Heaven expected him to be and who he was, between where his loyalties must ultimately lie and his desire to remain within Crowley’s orbit, between the orders that came from Upstairs and the purpose God had charged him with so very long ago. The war served only to heighten their frequency and severity. 

Take the medallions, for example. It was very obvious, upon being brought in to the office, that the others required the same sort of protection he’d provided for Val and his regulars and anyone else who knew to ask. The problem was the only one in the office who knew to ask was Val, and he was no more keen to share that knowledge than Aziraphale. 

He thought he was being very clever, discreetly blessing objects that everyone was already inclined to carry on their person at all times. Fernie Mae was the easiest: in addition to being his desk mate, she had a lovely little Magen David that she wore at all times and was quite happy to show off. Fergus, Festus, and Zofia all wore crucifixes, which made a convenient receptacle for the blessing but required some doing to get to. He’d had to get creative with the others: Verity’s favorite pen and Santino’s canteen had ended up being blessed by him, though it turned out that the blessing wore off little by little, with every line of ink written and every drop of drink sipped. He’d just turned his mind to the matter of the newly-arrived Surjan- who had quite a few items he always carried on his person, but as they were mostly tied to his being a Sikh Aziraphale wasn’t sure if his blessing would hold and was quite sure that he shouldn’t intrude- when Rupert died. 

Specifically, Rupert died when the hoarder of antiquities- an insipid little admirer of Oswald Mosley- he’d been paying a visit to had pulled out a gun, stuck it in his face, and fired. He wasn’t wearing anything blessed, or indeed anything that might be considered protective at all. And so he had died. 

He wasn’t the first death they’d suffered, of course. He wasn’t even the first death they’d had while Aziraphale had been working there. Milosh had been stabbed in an air raid shelter not two weeks after Aziraphale began his work for the British government; Ismene had died when a bomb fell directly onto her house; Giles’ heart had simply given out one night due to the combination of stress and old age. Rupert’s was the first death that he’d felt like he could have prevented, though. 

He’d gone to Verity after the funeral, and explained as carefully as possible that he could provide them all with something that would guard against future deaths, under most circumstances, but that she had to not ask where she got the medallions from and indeed, it would be better if she just distributed them herself. She must have already begun to suspect that he was only masquerading as human, because she didn’t argue with his terms. By the time Jehona came to join them the following year, she received a blessed coin as a standard issue good luck charm along with her desk assignment and assurances that so long as she could furnish the ammunition for her 9mm Largo pistol she could continue to use it. 

There had been two more preventable deaths to trouble his conscience with. First there had been Cordelia Wainwright, a Jersey Islander who had burned to fight the Nazis more directly after the news that her family had been deported to Germany had reached her. Concurrently, Aziraphale had received the much more heartening news that his friend Claude had successfully hidden their Jewish ancestry from the occupying Nazi forces, and was even, along with their partner, engaged in resistance activities, spreading news gleaned from illicitly recieved BBC broadcasts and slipping anti-war propaganda into soldiers’ pockets. He’d felt guilty about the disparities in their fortunes, and so he’d pushed and whispered wherever he could, and eventually Cordelia had been noticed by the division of the SOE engaged in sending saboteurs behind enemy lines and promptly snapped up. She’d gone quite happily, and then died when her parachute malfunctioned and dropped her to her death in France. Then there had been David Lewy. He’d read the reports coming out of the continent with what had appeared to be the same horror as the rest of them, but was in hindsight something deeper, and then had apparently snapped after word had reached them about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and how it had ended. He’d ended up drinking such a large quantity of absinthe that liver failure probably would have killed him even if he hadn’t jumped into the Thames. His mother had been from Warsaw. She was at the funeral along with his sister, and most of the rest of his family was in Canada: as far as any of them knew, he hadn’t any close relations left in Poland when the war broke out. Obviously, that hadn’t mattered much to David, or at least not enough to save his life. And, equally obviously, Aziraphale should have been able to sense that he was in crisis.

But this was an uniquely and intensely horrifying war. It was hard to tell what was ‘normal’ strain on the human psyche, and what was a crisis of existential proportions. Sometimes it was hard to tell what was his own strain, and what was the humans’. 

“Tell you what, let’s just do checks, yeah? I’ll look for the bad stuff, and you’ll look for the good, and we’ll put our notes together and see what stands out as alarming,” Crowley said, when they’d returned to the bookshop after the funeral.

“What constitutes alarming these days?” Aziraphale asked. 

“Pickling your innards and jumping into the Thames, for one,” Crowley replied bluntly. 

It was on the tip of Aziraphale’s tongue to point out that, by human standards, they had surpassed the first qualification some time ago, when Crowley reminded him that by their own standards they’d just reached the point of near non-sequiturs. 

“I keep thinking about Strasbourg,” he said.

Aziraphale frowned. “The city?”

“In 1349.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Aziraphale replied. 

“Just the burning and the killing and the-” he waved a hand in lieu of trying to finish the thought aloud.

“You got some of them out,” Aziraphale pointed out.

“Yeah. That,” Crowley said. “I got them out, and then you got them in. To Poland.”

Aziraphale nodded. Casimir III the Great had been the ruler of Poland at the time, and he’d made it perhaps the safest place to be Jewish in all of Christian-ruled Europe. Aziraphale had been well established in his court when Crowley’s message had reached him, and subsequently nudged him into allowing the refugees to settle there. It had been one of their earliest true collaborations, as neither had been given any assignment particular to the events: they’d simply done what they could without giving themselves away.

“And then they had babies, and their babies had babies, and six hundred years down the line what happens to all those babies?” Crowley asked. “The same shit their ancestors ran from, only _more_ and _worse_.”

“This is terrible,” Aziraphale agreed. It was such an inane sentiment that it sounded, even to his own ears, like an insulting understatement. He just wasn’t sure what else to say. Should he set himself up by the thesaurus and list out all the synonyms for terrible? List all the terrors of this war- Kristallnacht, Yekatit 12, the Rape of Nanking, and all the rest of it the way up to Warsaw? They would be here for some time, and it still wouldn’t be adequate. 

Time for a near non-sequitur of his own, then. “Fernie Mae.”

“What?”

“We should check up on Fernie Mae first,” Aziraphale said. “Her father emigrated to America as a young man, but most of his family remained in Germany.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Crowley said. “She’s got cousins, and like. Or did. Might even be from Strasbourg.”

“I think it’s part of France these days?” Aziraphale said, squinting up at the ceiling as though it might suddenly resolve itself into an atlas. “Or was before the Nazis invaded.”

“Fat lot of good that does anyone now.” 

“Fernie Mae, and then the Zielinskis,” he mused. They were from Lodz, not Warsaw, but that might not be much of a difference, in the end.

So he protected them as best he could, and together they wasted the Nazi’s time and money, and they sometimes caught their agents and they sometimes stopped them from getting their hands on something truly dangerous. It wasn’t enough, but it was what he could do without risking a Heavenly recall, and so it was done.  
  


* * *

Sunday dawned early, for some definition of dawn that included being up before the sun. It began with Val hissing downstairs, on the hunt for whichever combination of the other fellows had availed themselves of the relative privacy of the water closet and then left it in a bit of a state. Aziraphale waited until the confrontation had played itself out and the water closet was declared clean, and then he set his book aside. 

“It’s quite cold,” he said. “And I’ll be headed to church once I’ve had breakfast. Would you prefer to remain up here?” 

Crowley let out a tired hiss and then slithered onto the bed, coiling in on himself. 

“I’ll see you in a few hours then,” Aziraphale said. He did his best to tuck the covers in around him, and heated the warming pan back up with a touch before heading downstairs. 

Most of the fellows had left already. Probably the soldiers had twenty-four hour passes that were coming to their end, and most everyone else had either work or church, or someone who would miss them if they weren’t to be found at home in the morning. It was just Val and a few of the others still in dresses left in his shop. 

“We’re scarpering off before the sun comes out,” Val explained as he fussed with his wig. “Sharpies will have left the bar by now. Even if our clothes aren’t still there, there should be something butch we can zhoosh ourselves up in.”

“I’m sure there will be,” Aziraphale said, and he was. He had a long-established habit of passing out minor blessings and miracles at church, and consequently no eyebrows would be raised at any minor miracles he performed until tomorrow. “I do have some coats in the lost and found, though, that you may borrow if you like. Cover yourselves up a bit. You might have an easier time of it if you’re not trying to pass for women.”

Val sighed, and took off his wig. “Thanks, Auntie. Fog’s not half thick enough today for it.”

“It’s no trouble, dear boy.” It really wasn’t- and it was a good opportunity to ensure that they all had something on their person to ensure that they made it home safe and unbothered as he conjured up the requisite coats. 

He saw them off with a cheery “Mind how you go!” and then turned his attention to the kitchen. 

As expected, the jam and most of the bread he’d left out the night before was gone, but between what was left and what Belinda had laid the day before he had enough to make a dippy egg with soldiers. 

He let his mind wander as he boiled the water, and naturally it wandered in the direction of Crowley. He did wonder how much of last night’s display had been because Crowley had neither expected nor desired additional guests, how much had been because of his natural inclination towards mischief, and how much had been his discomfort towards Aziraphale’s criminal undertakings. 

Not that Val and the others were criminals in the same sense as Angus was a criminal, of course, but they were part of the reason why Aziraphale found it difficult to get along with much of law enforcement these days. He wasn’t sure whether or not Crowley quite understood it, and quite sure he didn’t know how to go about explaining it, try as he might to find some way of bringing it up. 

It had been a very strange thing, the first night Angus had showed up while Crowley was over and inadvertently revealed that their seventy-nine years of separation had changed him, had changed them both. They were much the same beings as they ever were, but they’d had new experiences they hadn’t spoken of, and developed new tastes they didn’t currently have the ability to explore as they willed. It created unexpected differences they were each startled by. 

Crowley’s driving, for one. Aziraphale might have guessed that he would enjoy the automobile, given his inability to get along with horses. He would not have guessed that he would drive at such viscous speeds, given that he’d never been able to tolerate anything above a very slow trot before. Even hansom cabs had given him motion sickness, once upon a time, before they’d had their falling out.

Frowning, Aziraphale realized that he’d been woolgathering for too long, and boiled his egg for longer than intended. He placed it in its cup, and then tapped it with his spoon, reverting it back to his preferred goopy consistency. Thank God for Sundays. Quite literally, he supposed. The day of rest in the local culture and all that.

He ate, cleaned up the kitchen, packed his basket, and then gave the sitting room, water closet, and basement shelter a quick look-see to ensure that all was in order. Then he called up the stairs “Crowley, I’m heading off now. I won’t be back until about noon, probably.” A sleepy sounding hiss came from upstairs, which Aziraphale took to be a sign of understanding. So he donned his hat, put on his coat, picked up his basket and umbrella, and went off. 

It was just about time for Sunday to properly dawn, which made it not quite seven now that Daylight Saving Time had been reinstituted for the war’s sake- plenty of time for Aziraphale to enjoy the long and relatively quiet walk to church with a few stops along the way. If he took the underground, of course, he could have been to Hackney in time for the earliest services, perhaps even with enough time to help set things up. But if he did that, he wouldn’t be able to make his rounds, and his basket was laden with more food than he felt comfortable having in the house. 

There was doing well between the gifts, the illegal goods, and his pre-war hoarding, and then there was gluttony. Doing much more than just keeping a decent supply of a few items that might be needed in case of emergency and then eating them himself before they went bad edged dangerously close to the latter. 

First there was Priam Harkness, an old friend of his who still suffered from terrible shellshock from the last war. He was a virtual shut-in as a result, and the only consolation he had was his dog, a small terrier called Silly, from ‘silly bugger’. What with the rationing, there wasn’t much in the way for the poor creature to eat, aside from rats (which needed to be caught, killed, and butchered by Priam), sausages (when they weren’t being rationed, which meant they were also roughly half bread), Spam (he’d be shocked to learn that Spam was anything less than fifty percent salt), and whatever bits and bobs Aziraphale was able to secure from Angus. This time it was brawn, tinned and chilled, and now blessed to help the creature live long enough to see her master through the war. 

Then there were the Maybournes, who ran a greengrocer Aziraphale frequented, and had just lost a son to fighting in Italy. One of Aziraphale’s neighbors had recently shared a tin of candied pineapples with him, thus allowing him to create a tin of his own. He passed it on to them along with some hedgerow jam, a loaf of bread with an old two guinea coin miracled into it, six ounces of tea, his condolences for their loss, and what ended up being three of his handkerchiefs.

One of the younger Maybournes- the other son, William- caught up to him outside once he’d extracted himself. The boy had been called up just recently, and was due to report for training by the end of the week, and he’d heard a rumor that Ezra Fell could provide you with something that could keep you alive, even if-

“Would you prefer a crucifix, a plain cross, or a St. Christopher pendant?” Aziraphale asked, already reaching inside his jacket pocket. The Maybournes were Catholic, so he’d guess that the rest of his pendants wouldn’t suit, though he supposed the coin might be welcome as well.

“Crucifix, I guess,” William said after a moment. 

“Keep it on you at all times, even when sleeping,” Aziraphale said as he handed the blessed thing over. “It only works if conditions are not so terrible that there really is no chance of living, and this war does not always provide that. You have to choose to live. If, for whatever reason, you don’t make that choice, that protection will not work. If it’s taken from you by force, it will not protect them, though it will protect you again should you retrieve it. If you ever meet someone you care about more than your own life, you may give it to them, and the protection will be transferred over them and away from you. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” William said, and put it on, shivering slightly as he did so. Some of them did that- those who were especially sensitive to otherworldly powers. 

“Good,” Aziraphale said. “Now, do take care, dear boy, and come home safe. I don’t want to go through this a second time.”

William nodded, and let him get a little farther down the block before asking “Did Joe have one of these?” Joe being his now-deceased older brother, of course.

“Yes,” Aziraphale said without turning around. “He did.” 

He kept walking, and William didn’t call out to him again. 

He didn’t have any other bereaved families to visit today, thankfully, which left him with only two more stops to make. The Soup Kitchen for the Jewish Poor in Spitalfields took the rest of his spare food gratefully. The London Hospital in Whitechapel never saw him, precisely, but no one ever complained that they felt like they still had energy after a night shift, or that someone who wasn’t expected to last the day pulled through anyhow. Then it was just him and the roads that lead him up to Hackney and the New Gravel Pit Chapel. 

Aziraphale generally changed churches (and, in recent centuries, sects of Christianity as well) sometime in the early part of a new decade in order to avoid awkward questions, but he'd been attending the New Gravel Pit Chapel for nearly fourteen years now, having more or less arrived at the decision not to switch again until the war had ended. It just didn’t seem right to leave in the middle of it, even with the risk of his lack of ageing being noticed. Thus far, however, if anyone had noticed they hadn’t mentioned it. Perhaps everyone just had enough to be getting on with, without puzzling over him.

This particular chapel was Unitarian by affiliation, and Aziraphale had grown quite comfortable with the hymnals and the mixing of old and new readings, and the occasionally quite radical sermons. They met in the church hall rather than the main part of the chapel, courtesy of damage left by the Blitz, but that was nothing they couldn’t adapt to. Theirs was hardly the only church to be hit by bombs, after all. If that left his committee to meet in one corner of the hall while Sunday school fell to bedlam in another come the end of services, then, well, at least it was warm.

It had been a bitterly cold October otherwise, thus far. 

It was a brief meeting, mostly concerned with making sure everyone knew what was required of them for the indoor Bonfire Night celebration they were throwing for the children in conjunction with several other organizations, the clothing drive they were going to have all through November, and how they were dividing up the harvest from the church’s garden. They mingled for a bit afterwards, Aziraphale discreetly handing out blessings whenever possible, and it was shortly after noon when Aziraphale bid them goodbye.

He took the Underground home, making only a quick stop at the bakery for bread, but he needn’t have bothered. Crowley was still asleep when he arrived.

* * *

Technically, they all had their specialized niches, and some of them were field agents who would take care of the fighting while the rest of them did the intellectual work. Alice and Sam were even, very technically, secretarial staff. 

In reality, no one really had the time or energy to spare on such distinctions, and the division of labor fell entirely to what people were capable of providing. Simon was an epileptic, and therefore kept as well away from anything that might trigger a seizure as they could manage. Ozzy was nearing sixty and had rather bad arthritis in his hands, which also tended to keep him out of the action. Ruby had been shot in the leg when a German POW attempted to escape from the hospital she’d been assigned to, and the wound had been poorly treated and become infected twice, leaving her only able to walk with a pronounced limp and the aide of a cane. 

There were other limitations too. Santino was perfectly capable in a fight against human opponents, but would freeze up in the face of anything _other_. Fernie Mae was not quite a pacifist, but she disliked violence immensely and wouldn’t resort to it until long after most of the rest of them had given in to its necessity. Ctibor had the opposite problem, resorting to violence far too easily and cavalierly. While Alice was quite handy with a knife and had some quite well-developed muscles from her years of working in the Tang family bakery, she was not necessarily as handy as she believed herself to be. Val was a decent shot, but not a crack one, and sometimes he forgot that too.

For Aziraphale, the main limitation he faced at first was that no one trusted him not to bumble his way into the line of fire and accidentally hand the Nazis the crown jewels in the process. This seemed a bit much to Aziraphale. Yes, he hadn’t had the best introduction to the SOE and he was _very_ aware of it, but it still seemed like a bit much. 

Predictably, Crowley was the one who figured out how to break the ice, so to speak. Unpredictably, this involved being handed a sword again for the first time in centuries and told to fight a large number of empty suits of armor. 

The empty suits of armor were ambulatory, and the crumbling old manor house they had run amok in was warded so strongly against fire that guns were rendered useless, hence the need for swordplay.

“Come on then, _Ezra_. You’re the best swordsman I know,” Crowley had said, and then they were off, with more than enough witnesses to make him look slightly more competent. That had been the point of it, of course. While Aziraphale knew that he was the better swordsman of the two, Crowley wasn’t exactly a poor one, and most of the few genuine physical fights they’d had had ended in a tie. 

It worked. It worked a little too well, to be frank. He started to spend more and more time on stakeouts (generally with Crowley, which was no hardship) and even raids, which didn’t suit him at all. 

He liked guns, in theory, because in practice they’d provided him with a perfect excuse to no longer own a sword. Having to carry one around was rather wearing the shine off. 

Not that he could say that, of course. He was meant to be a soldier, from the very moment of his creation. He shouldn’t be flinching from the necessity of violence. Perhaps more importantly, he was an angel, charged with looking after humanity. If he was not going on these raids, then one of them would have to, and human souls could be as surprisingly fragile as they were surprisingly resilient, and the act of killing could very easily send someone into a tailspin from which they could not easily recover. Even when the circumstances seemed very clear-cut- when it was a matter of survival, when the other person was at least aligned with the absolute worst of the worst, it could be difficult not to spiral. It was hard not to question, in the aftermath, whether or not that particular individual was really all that bad, and what lies they might have been told to make them fight. It could be difficult not to wonder how much of what you’d been told was lies, for that matter. 

The point was, he didn’t want to be responsible for tarnishing anyone’s soul because he wasn’t there to do what needed doing. So he went where he was directed, and if his attempts to talk down their opponents rarely bore fruit, then, well, they were at war. Violence was to be expected.

Thankfully, his discomfort was noted, either by Verity directly, or (more likely) by Crowley who then brought it to her attention. Having more experienced soldiers join their little wartime undertaking probably helped as well. He had never been a soldier, as far as his Earthly paperwork was concerned. 

* * *

He was still working on those books that day. Unfortunately, they were at the stage where it was mostly a matter of waiting for the glue to dry, and Crowley was still asleep upstairs. Aziraphale pottered around with something like lunch, started and then discarded a half dozen different books, and then, out of sheer desperation, opened the shop on Sunday for the first time in well over a decade.

He wasn’t expecting much, but, nevertheless, he wasn’t terribly surprised when the bell above the door rang as soon as he’d settled himself behind the counter.

“Working on the sabbath, Mr. Fell?” Soledad asked. She had her children with her, all six of them, including her youngest child and only son Sandalio, three years old and already an incredible handful.

“I shall have to have my day of rest when it’s possible for me to feel restful,” Aziraphale grumbled, trying to keep an eye on the boy, who quickly peeled away from his mother and sisters and went toddling off deeper into the shop.

Aziraphale had met Soledad Woolf through her husband, Ernest Woolf. He’d met Ernest when he’d bailed the man out of jail. It was a funny story, actually. A friend of his had been arrested for “printing obscenities'”, a charge that never failed to make Aziraphale roll his eyes, as more often than not the “obscenities” in question would have been considered career-endingly milquetoast by the standards of any self-respecting Restoration author, and were undoubtedly being outdone by people he knew and considered friends besides. He gone to bail him out, and the policeman in charge of such things had proven to be such a bore that he really felt he had no choice but to see his friend safely back home, and then return to the station and inconvenience him further by bailing out everyone who’d been arrested during the renter’s strike that day.

Ernest had stayed behind to thank him, and introduce himself. Aziraphale had been rather inclined to like him on the strength of his name alone, and the inclination had only grown when upon declining his invitation to attend a meeting of his circle of anarchists Ernest had merely laughed, conceded that it wasn’t the most fun one could have in an evening, and invited him to dinner with his family instead. Aziraphale had brought some wine and a Bundt cake, and had a lovely evening getting to know Ernest and Soledad, using a little miracle to ensure that their three existing daughters went to sleep on time with little fuss.

Theirs was an unusually strong love, something which was made even more incredible by the way they’d met. It had been in Spain: Ernest had been a volunteer with a gangrenous leg wound, and Soledad had been a nurse who’d worked quickly and kept her bone saws as sharp as they needed to be. They’d fled the country shortly thereafter when, as Ernest put it, Stalin had stuck his oar in and started beating people about the head with it, and they were together from that point on up until Ernest died during the Blitz a few short months before Sandalio was born.

“And what brings you to my shop, Mrs. Woolf?” he asked. 

“Well _someone_ ,” Soledad said, as the eldest, Ernestine, immediately began to scuff the floor with her shoes guiltily. “Has to present a story they enjoy to her class, and yet, has not made any effort to read any stories recently at all.”

“Well goodness, we can’t have that!” Aziraphale protested instinctively. Then he thought about it for a moment. “I’m not sure you’ve come to the right place, though, Mrs. Woolf. Most of my stock is not really for children.”

“True. But you must have some idea what kind of story she could read,” Soledad pressed. 

Aziraphale thought about it. “I would actually recommend _The Day Boy and the Night Girl_ , for young Miss Ernestine,” he said. “Though that might be too much of a story for one night’s reading. Hmm.” He let himself lapse off, momentarily stymied. 

“I read the papers,” Ernestine muttered sullenly. 

“Which is genuinely commendable, but doesn’t fit the strictures of your assignment,” Aziraphale pointed out. “You know, I think I’d quite like to hear what you made of _Maya the Bee_ , but that’s also probably too long.” And it was originally a German work too, which would likely cause problems at school. “I don’t suppose you’ve read any works of fiction in the papers that you’ve enjoyed?”

“There aren’t any in the papers we get,” Soledad told him. “Otherwise we would not be in this situation.”

“I don’t see why I can’t use a newspaper article,” Ernestine grumbled. “It’s _factual_.”

She was a _tremendously_ serious child. Aziraphale would have to look her up in twenty years’ time, and see what she’d made of herself. “Let’s limit ourselves to things which are roughly as long as a newspaper article then.”

Short stories, then. He did actually have several anthologies of children’s stories, but most of them were collectibles, and Victorian morality tales besides- nothing he’d want to hand to a child, no matter how serious, and probably nothing Soledad would like her children to internalize either. _Just So Stories_ , then? Most of those were quite good and avoided excessive moralizing. Or perhaps _The Reluctant Dragon_ would be more to her tastes…

“Snek,” said Sandalio. 

“Well, it’s the end of the month so I don’t have very much to snack on, but...” Aziraphale turned around, and found that the boy had not been demanding food at all. 

“No,” Sandalio insisted, pointing to where Crowley was coiled by the doorway. “Snek.”

Two of the younger girls screamed, Soledad looked quite taken aback, and Ernestine crossed her arms and said “It’s a _snake_.”

“Yes, he is,” Aziraphale said, beginning to feel entitled to indulging in a bit of long-sufferance. “But don’t worry, he’s quite harmless.”

Crowley hissed, disgruntled. 

“In fact, he’s actually rather friendly,” he said pointedly. If Crowley was going to insist upon showing himself to the bookshop’s visitors like then he was simply going to have to deal with those visitors. “Go on, give him a pat.”

No sooner had the words left his mouth than he had the thought that perhaps that was too far. But Crowley didn’t flee back the way he came. Instead he let Sandalio approach, and pat him with his clumsy toddler’s hands, looking quite content to be pat. 

Aziraphale turned back to Soledad. Soledad continued to watch her son with Crowley. 

“That’s not an English snake,” she said at last. 

“Oh, I disagree,” Aziraphale replied. “He’s been here almost as long as I have.”

Whatever response Soledad had to that information was lost as the air raid siren began to sound. 

“Oh _bother_ ,” Aziraphale said, with feeling.

“Which is closest?” Soledad asked. “Soho Gardens, or-”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Mrs. Woolf,” Aziraphale snapped. “I have a shelter in the cellar.” This particular round of bombs was nowhere near as intense in frequency as the Blitz had been, but they were… different. Not technically bombs at all, but rather rockets, unmanned and terrifyingly fast. They could have several minutes of warning, when the Luftwaffe was headed towards them; with these V-2 rockets, they often had less that a minute. “Go straight through the kitchen, everyone, you can’t miss it. I’m going to lock up and I’ll be right behind you straight away.”

They didn’t need telling twice. The Woolf family took off through the kitchen, Sandalio abandoning Crowley as he was scooped up by his mother.

Aziraphale went over to the door, and did not lock it. Instead, he checked the anti-looting ward and, finding it still well in place, merely replaced the OPEN sign with one which read INDOOR SHELTER.

When he turned back around Crowley was there, hissing concernedly around his ankles. 

“Steady on, dear boy,” Aziraphale told him, picking him up and letting him drape himself around his neck and shoulders. 

Belinda, as she had long since learned to do, was sitting nicely in her milkcrate. Aziraphale picked it up and followed the Woolf family downstairs. Somewhere nearby- not on his street, he didn’t think, but nearby nevertheless- there was an impact as one of those rockets landed. He hoped it had only destroyed a property which had already been rendered uninhabitable by earlier bombs. He also hoped, though it was uncharitable of him, that whoever it was who had designed the blasted things was made to answer for it. 

What followed was nothing he hadn’t done some variation of dozens upon dozens of times over the course of the last five years. At first they all sat in silence, listening to the explosions of the rockets and the answering (and, or so the reports Aziraphale had seen on the matter had it, ineffective) retort of anti-aircraft fire. Soon, however, the children seemed to grow tired of fear, and began to invent some kind of game which involved leapfrogging over the cots and one another- save for Sandalio, who remained curled in his mother’s lap, and Ernestine, who looked at her sisters at play with a faint frown that suggested that she’d read about such things and found them to be a quaint custom she was far too sophisticated to find much value in. 

After an hour or so, Aziraphale grew tired of fear as well. He popped back up to the shop: it was, of course, the safest place to be in all London, but the humans didn’t know that and he didn’t know how to tell them, so he moved quickly so as not to disturb them. In addition to the cots, his shelter had a chamber pot and wash basin set behind a folding curtain for privacy, several oil lamps, some gallons of water, and a wicking stove. He emptied his linen closet of his warmest blankets, and then made a second trip for a tea tray, laden not only with the necessities for serving tea, but also three tins of beans, a loaf of bread, the remainder of his butter, several plates and a full complement of cutlery. He also brought a book.

“I’m afraid it’ll be beans on toast tonight, should we still be down here come supper time,” Aziraphale said. 

“That will do,” Soledad said, eyeing the beans and bread suspiciously before giving up. She’d been around long enough to know that he wouldn’t allow anyone to go hungry on his watch. 

“Now, as for you, young lady, I have this,” he said. He offered her the book, which she took warily. “It wouldn’t be my first choice to get you started on fiction, but as I have yet to arrive on such a choice, it will have to do.” It would be uncontroversial, if nothing else: he had yet to hear much of a word against Pooh Bear. And, as the book itself was a newer one and he was not particularly well-acquainted with A.A. Milne, it would be easy to replace should any of the dangers that came with handing a book to a child come to pass. 

To his surprise, Ernestine seemed to enjoy the book immensely. She sat quietly and read the whole thing, mouth moving silently along. She even treated them to two of the stories being read aloud after supper, both of the ones which prominently featured Eeyore, who he gathered she identified with strongly. Then it was time for bed. Aziraphale doused the lamps- save for the ones by the makeshift water closet and the entrance, which he merely turned down- and then made himself as comfortable on one of the cots as he could be, one of his favorite quilts cinched tightly around the both of them. 

Crowley stayed with him the entire time, nearly hidden by his jacket. Aziraphale often found that rather than worrying at his buttons, or his cufflinks, or the hem of his waistcoat, he was stroking Crowley’s head instead. Crowley did not protest this treatment. Indeed, he sometimes pressed his head more fully against Aziraphale’s fingers, or else let out a contented hiss. 

Aziraphale could not help but think, with a stab of bitterness too sharp to be ignored, that this was the closest intimacy they could ever be allowed. Why shouldn’t he enjoy it, when given the chance? It wasn’t like they were going to get very many such chances.

* * *

For a time in 1941, he really thought he was going to tell him. He’d intended to, at any rate. It had been such a wonderful feeling, such a heady rush, to be in love and to be loved in return. 

He’d told himself that he was taking it slow. That he was savoring their renewed connection after so long of not speaking to one another. That they needed time to reconnect, to relearn one another. That he needed to be absolutely sure that his feelings were returned; that he couldn’t risk their still-fragile friendship without certainty that they would be embarking on something equally important, if not moreso. 

When he looked back at it later, he would wonder if he might not still be hung up on that last part even if Hell hadn’t intruded, but Hell had, and he knew now, with a bone-deep certainty, that they were never going to be left alone in peace. They were never going to be able to act on their feelings. There would be no point in speaking them aloud.

As far as Hellish intrusions went it hadn’t even been that bad. It had happened like this: they’d been driving along after being relieved at a stakeout by Val and Ctibor, flushed with the success of having noticed several unusual comings and goings, as well as several hours spent in highly agreeable company. Aziraphale had invited him back to the bookshop for a nightcap, and Crowley had accepted and then Dagon’s voice had come in over the radio. 

Crowley snapped. No miracle was produced, but presumably they could hear the sound over the radio down in Hell. “Lord Dagon,” he greeted, with painfully false cheer. “What a surprise. I’m kind of in the middle of something, so-”

“Trying to weasel out of more work already, are we?” Dagon asked. 

“No, no, I didn’t say that,” Crowley replied. “I just-”

“We have an assignment for you,” Dagon continued, as though he hadn’t spoken. 

“Right, okay, that’s-”

“Standby for instructions.”

“Oh no,” Crowley whispered, horrified. He slammed on the brakes, but that made little difference. The infernal instructions came out of the radio in the form of black smoke, making a beeline for the demon’s eyeballs. Crowley jerked and convulsed, flailing about. His foot left the brakes and hit the accelerator, and the wheel, sending them peeling off road and onto the sidewalk for a moment, and then careening off towards a fountain in the next. Not knowing what else there was to do, Aziraphale grabbed the keys out of the ignition and pulled them free. 

When Crowley came to, the car had stopped completely, just short of the fountain. He blinked, and then his eyes widened as he took in the keys Aziraphale still had clutched in his hand. 

‘What did you do?” he demanded, snatching them back. “No, no, don’t answer that, just-” He jammed them into the ignition. “Shhhhh!”

“-owley. Crowley. Crowley, you’d better not be slacking,” Dagon was saying as the radio crackled back to life. 

“I’m not slacking, you gave me those instructions while I was driving and I knocked the keys out of the ignition with the flailing,” Crowley hissed. “You’re lucky you didn’t discorporate me.”

“No, _you’re_ lucky,” Dagon retorted. She sounded bored, almost distracted, which seemed to be a very dire insult on top of what had very nearly been a very serious injury. “Our Dark Lord does not countenance excuses, or delays. Now get to work!”

That counted as a send off, apparently- the radio returned to some variety of jazz. Breathing hard, Crowley shut it off with more force than the mechanism required. 

“Right,” he said. “Well. I’ve got a thing in Cambridge, apparently.”

“Right,” Aziraphale echoed softly. “Is there anything I can-”

“No,” Crowley replied. “I should- they might be watching. It’s better that I do this on my own. I’ll just- I’ll drop you off at the bookshop and be on my way.”

Aziraphale nodded. “Should I-”

“Leave it, Aziraphale,” Crowley snapped. “Leave. It. Be.”

Aziraphale was silent for a moment. “And when Verity asks where you’ve gone?”

“Tell her I’m following a lead,” Crowley replied. “This has happened before. She won’t ask any more questions.”

“Does this happen often?” Aziraphale asked. 

“Often enough,” Crowley replied, eyes fixed on the road. “Mostly they come in through the radio. Sometimes the cinema, nowadays. Every so often I’ll get a phone call, but they mostly use it the way humans do- to tell me to come meet them somewhere for something important.”

“Ah,” Aziraphale said. 

They made the rest of the drive in silence. Crowley pulled up in front of the bookshop without a hint of his usual screech of tires.

“Well, this is you,” he said. 

“Yes,” Aziraphale agreed. 

“I’ll see you in a few days, angel.” He still wasn’t looking at him. 

“Righty-o,” Aziraphale said woodenly. He forced himself to leave the car. 

Roughly ten minutes later he found himself sitting down with a tumbler full of scotch, feeling stupid, afraid, and an enormous sense of loss. Frustratingly, that last one didn’t even make sense. It wasn’t like there had been anything to lose. There never could be. He’d just forgotten that little fact. 

He’d forgotten that the problem wasn’t only him. It wasn’t only his faith in God that necessarily extended to Heaven, it wasn’t only his reluctance to embrace changes to his life, it wasn’t even only his own cowardice. It was that Crowley, for all his rebellion and bravery, could still be bullied by Hell into doing their bidding- and he wasn’t wrong to keep giving in.

Hell didn’t send rude notes. And Aziraphale could never ask him to- could never _want_ him to- risk his life for something doomed to failure. 

He couldn’t place the burden of having to be the one to continually say no on him either.

So. That was it, then. They were back to the Arrangement, back to being friendly, but could go no further. There was nothing else to be done. 

Well, he realized, once it hit him what he’d been staring blankly ahead at, there was _something_ he could do. Laying aside his drink for the time being, he got up, unplugged the wireless, and put it into storage where it couldn’t hurt anyone.

* * *

It was nearly midnight before the all-clear sounded. After perhaps a moment’s quiet discussion with Soledad, it was agreed that it would be better for the children to get an early start to the day, rather than break up the night’s sleep in order to get them home, and so it was half past five when they began the business of waking them all up. There was a bit of a to-do with regards to finding everyone’s shoes- somehow, both Carmen _and_ Inez had misplaced their right shoes, and Isabel had managed to lose hers altogether- and once they’d sorted that, they had to get six sleepy and grumpy children home through the pre-dawn dark. 

Crowley slithered off of him at some point during the proceedings. Aziraphale saw him coiled up by the till as they left: he carrying Isabel, Soledad carrying Sandalio, and Dolores leading the four older girls out onto the street. Normally, that would have been Ernestine’s job, but she was too engrossed in _Winnie-the-Pooh_ to take charge as she normally would. 

“You know, if you give me your word that you’ll treat it gently, I shall let you have the book,” Aziraphale told her. 

Ernestine gave him her word, and they solemnly shook on it, as much as they could with Aziraphale still holding a sleeping toddler.

“And should she get jam on it or something of that nature, I beg of you: do not tell me,” Aziraphale added to Soledad. 

Soledad laughed quietly and indicated that he could set Isabel down next to Sandalio. 

“That one’s the start of a series, you know,” he added. “And I’m sure that by the time she’s outgrown them someone else will have grown into them, so if you’d like the rest just send the word.”

“Well, we’ll see how school goes today,” Soledad said. “Staying for breakfast?”

“Oh no, I couldn’t possibly-”

“We ate your rations last night, the least you could do is eat ours,” she replied.

So Aziraphale joined them for toast with marmalade. The jar was nearly empty as they sat down, but Aziraphale made certain that it was full again before he left. 

Crowley was not coiled up by the till when he returned. Rather, he was standing in front of the icebox. 

“You know, you should really consider getting a mechanical refrigerator,” Crowley said, in lieu of a greeting. 

“Crowley!” Aziraphale replied, beaming too hard to have a care for how naked the relief in his voice was. “You’re back!”

“I came back _days_ ago, angel,” Crowley scoffed. “Would have thought you noticed that.”

Reigning in the urge to go over and give him a hug with great difficulty, Aziraphale managed to reply “And I hardly think I need a mechanical refrigerator- besides, I doubt they’re making them, what with the war and all.”

“Well, I don’t mean right now,” Crowley retorted. “But when the war’s done with-”

“Heaven only knows when that will be,” Aziraphale said, and then thought about it for a moment. “Actually, they probably don’t know, so never mind.”

“So you’ll get one then?”

“Tell you what,” Aziraphale said. “If the war’s over in a year’s time, I’ll consider it.”

“If the war’s over in a year’s time, I’ll buy one for you,” Crowley retorted with a smirk.

Aziraphale found he was still beaming too hard to allow his expression to reply for him. “Oh, stop letting the cold air out,” he admonished. “Are you looking to eat? I just had toast with the Woolf family, but I could whip something up for you.”

“Oh, toast for supper _and_ breakfast, angel?” he teased, even as he closed the icebox door.

Aziraphale rolled his eyes. “There is a war on, dear boy. Now, breakfast?”

“Are we going into the office today?” Crowley asked. 

“I was planning on it. The glue should be dry by now.”

“Then I’ll take an egg, over easy,” Crowley said, settling down at the table. 

“Why you agreed to get those powdered abominations when _you like eggs_ I will never understand,” Aziraphale said, though he dutifully retrieved Belinda’s freshly-laid egg and headed for the stove. 

“Honestly? You get more on a powdered egg ration, and I thought _Yeah, it’s just an egg, but powdered, it’ll be alright_ and now here we are. It’s been years. I still don’t know how to eat them.”

“Have you tried consulting the cookbooks? I do believe the government has issued several.”

“Ha! You know I don’t read.” 

Aziraphale, who knew that Crowley could read perfectly well, rolled his eyes. 

“Besides,” Crowley continued. “Why would I need to learn how to cook powdered eggs when I can just come here and steal yours?”

“It’s not stealing if I cook it up for you and serve it on a plate.”

“Swindling then,” Crowley amended. “This is a properly demonic egg acquisition that we’re having here.”

“Well, if that’s the case then you can cook this yourself,” Aziraphale retorted, standing aside to give Crowley a good view of where his egg was beginning to fry.

After a moment, Crowley admitted “I don’t really know how to cook actual eggs either.”

Aziraphale laughed. “How did you manage when-” he cut himself off, not wanting to reference the fight that had separated them for decades.

“Honestly? Didn’t eat much,” Crowley said. “I spent probably half the time just sleeping, to tell you the truth.”

“You know, I’ll never understand how you can do that either,” Aziraphale said, which was partially true. It had been a very lonely time, those seventy-nine years apart, for the both of them. He’d dealt with it by learning to dance. He imagined that Crowley slept for much the same reasons.

“Yeah, well, you can’t know all my secrets,” Crowley said. “I’m an international man-shaped being of mystery.”

“Well, if you say so,” Aziraphale replied, and then busied himself with the egg.

It was Monday, but there was nothing intrinsically wrong with Mondays. There was a war on, but they were at least no longer under threat of invasion. There was a demon in his kitchen, but he did not have to consider him anything other than a friendly associate. There simply wasn’t much more worth saying on the matter.


End file.
